The ubiquity of available access to information using the Internet and the worldwide web (WWW) has naturally drawn the focus of advertisers. As a result, the Internet has also become a popular medium for advertising, where commercials are included in webpages and the advertisers try to understand where to best place their advertisements in order to draw the attention of the users.
Targeting advertisements towards a specific demographic audience is a key component of successful advertising. Many solutions have been developed for gleaning demographic information about Internet users in order for advertisers to target an audience or user that would be more interested in their advertised product. With this aim, the demographic characteristics of the users that tend to visit certain websites are determined in order to place ads targeted to certain demographics, such as age, gender, and the likes of users visiting the websites. Such targeted advertising enables marketing budgets to be spent more effectively.
However, it is common for a group of people with similar demographic characteristics to have different tastes, interests, and preferences. For example, when two persons having similar demographics view an advertisement for a seafood restaurant, one person may like, while the other person may dislike, the advertised product. That is, for a group of people from the same demographic group, each person in the group may have individual preferences not shared with other persons in the group. Furthermore, users' preferences may change over time, thus leaving the advertising content related to the user's previous preferences irrelevant. Therefore, solutions targeting advertisements discussed in the related art cannot provide a sufficiently accurate current indication as to whether or not the user likes or dislikes an advertised content.
Alternate solutions may employ pupillometry as a technique for measuring the interests of users in advertised content effectively target advertisements. As discussed in the related art, pupillometry is the measurement of the diameter of pupils in psychology. For example, “Eye-Opener: Why Do Pupils Dilate in Response to Emotional States” published on Dec. 7, 2012, by Joss Fong discusses pupillometry. The article, quoting Jagdish Sheth, a marketing professor at Emory University, describes pupillometry as a technique for measuring the consumers' responses to television commercials, and was eventually abandoned as a scientific way to establish whether it measured interest or anxiety was not found.
It would be therefore advantageous to provide a solution that would enable determination of the attention of a user to content, such as advertised content using modern pupillometry techniques.